


i'll use you as a warning sign

by belljar



Category: All For the Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Past Abuse, Stream of Consciousness, idk how 2 tag this umm its like. jeans thoughts abt being w/ the trojans and jeremy especially ? idk, kind of?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-19
Updated: 2016-03-19
Packaged: 2018-05-27 18:30:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6295096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belljar/pseuds/belljar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jean Moreau doesn’t know what love is. Jean Moreau doesn’t know what family is and not what being part of a team is either. And above all, Jean Moreau wasn’t made for that anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i'll use you as a warning sign

**Author's Note:**

  * For [softbruise](https://archiveofourown.org/users/softbruise/gifts).



> this is unbetaed, but i hope it's all right anyway. title from "i found" by amber run. xx

He’s been with the Trojans for three months and he’s beginning to—his therapist would say _cope_ ; assimilate.

Jeremy is—Jeremy is a bright, shining image of everything that’s _not_ Jean. Jeremy wears all colours while Jean is all black. Jeremy loves everyone and Jean—he doesn’t even know what the word means. He’s never known what the word meant. Jeremy is all—red and gold and _shining_ and Jean is a shadow of something that hasn’t even ever existed. He’s trying to rebuild himself into something that could resemble a person, but it’s hard because there’s no foundation, nothing to begin with. He’s starting from scratch and it’s—well.

He hurt himself a lot, in the beginning. Not knowing what love is and being raised by violence – the closest thing he’s ever been is a closed fist. And it’s a weird kind of miss—that. Why do you miss something that _hurts_?

He didn’t tell anyone, of course. He’s yet to talk properly with the therapist they assigned him and he’s not about to talk with Jeremy about it. He’d get pity and all he wants is pain.

It was mostly razors, or cigarettes. He didn’t care for equipment, as long as it _hurt_. He’d spent every second since his parents sent him to the Ravens wanting to escape. It was awful, terrible—he wanted out. He remembers how he felt when Kevin Day escaped—some mixture of euphoria, jealousy, and melancholy—because he knew he could never escape. He’d be in black till he died.

So you’d think that now he’s finally here, out, escaped—he’d first of all quit the black clothing. Then, he’d be happy to not be bleeding anymore. He’d be happy to not find fresh bruises blossoming everywhere on his goddam _hollow_ body. He’d be overjoyed to just exist—to be around people that weren’t trying to destroy him.

And, he assumes, he is. In the beginning, of course, he didn’t think this would last. Somehow, the Moriyamas would hunt him down and the death would be so slow. He’d deserve that, obviously; he wouldn’t try to fight back. Now, three months into it—most of the time, he still doesn’t think it’ll last, but there are some moments—there are _some moments_ , where he thinks it might. Some moments during practice where everything just _clicks_ and he feels like he could, potentially, become wholly part of this team. _A_ team.

The Ravens were a team but they were also— _not_. They were _the_ team—the winning team; had the best players and the best stats. Everything always went without a hitch, everything was _perfect_ —they were a team in the way that they knew each other’s strengths and weaknesses (though all weaknesses were eliminated), knew how to be perfect. But they also weren’t a _team_ —not like the Trojans, and not like, Jean has come to know, the Foxes either. The Ravens were a unity, but not a team. They were individual players, all fighting each other constantly. If one died, well—that’d mean you had a bigger chance of getting promoted.

The Trojans aren’t out to destroy each other. They care for each other and they want the _best_ for each other. They’re a team, and in some moments Jean feels like he could become part of that.

That’s a terrifying thought. That’s a _horribly distressing thought._

Jean Moreau doesn’t know what love is. Jean Moreau doesn’t know what family is and not what being part of a _team_ is either. And above all, Jean Moreau wasn’t made for that anyway.

Child born from violence – he’ll cherish the punch like it’s resurrection. Like it’s salvation. So he hurt himself – it won’t be the same as someone else doing it, but it’ll be pain, which is recognition. It’s all muscle memory from there.

Trauma has a weird way of twisting evil into kind and kind into evil.

When Jeremy is kind – which Jeremy is, because he’s Jeremy Knox – Jean wants to disappear. He didn’t say anything at all for the first month because he hoped that’d shut him up; make him push him away. When that didn’t work, the first thing he said was _fuck you_. To that, Jeremy had smiled brightly and in a happy tone exclaimed, “and finally, he _speaks_.” Then he’d went on telling another story starring his little sisters and a strawberry harvest gone wrong.

Jean has done his utmost best to make them all _hate_ him. He’s sworn, and cursed, and rolled his eyes. And again, and again, and again, he’s been invited back in. They haven’t pushed him away.

Kindness is such a foreign tongue and he keeps stumbling over the syllables. Not only is it foreign, but it also doesn’t fit him, wasn’t made for him. Jean Moreau wasn’t made to be treated _kindly_.

So kind is evil, and evil is kind. He misses the hurt, misses the blood, misses the pain. The therapist would say Stockholm syndrome, he supposes. Or maybe just some messed-up kind of masochism.

He hasn’t hurt himself in weeks, though. A sign he’s really becoming part of the team, maybe. Or something like that. Right now, he really wants to, though. Not just because—well, all of _that_ ; all of the _needing to hurt_ in order to know he’s still alive, all of the _needing_ and _missing_ the pain, all of the blood dripping everywhere as a tangible, touchable reminder that he exists. He needs it to forget how it feels to look at Jeremy. How it feels—he doesn’t understand anything that’s happening and quite frankly he doesn’t really want to.

He wants to _hurt_ ; he knows _hurt_. He doesn’t know this. Jeremy is so—Jeremy is so fucking _sweet_ and that’s the worst thing in the world. He’s soft, and kind, and he hums when he makes tea in the morning, he sings in the shower, he always asks if Jean needs anything from the store before he goes. Jean never needs anything, ever, but Jeremy asks every time anyway. In the beginning, he wanted him to push him away. Part of him still does – part of him really, _really_ still wants Jeremy to mess him up so bad, force him out, _kill_ him. The therapist would say it’s the trauma talking – and then that the part of him that suddenly wants something _else_ is the non-trauma, is that word he’s afraid of, that word he never learned, that thing he wasn’t _made for_.

Now, some of the time, he wants something else, too. Now, when he sees Jeremy, his first instinct isn’t to try getting Jeremy to hate him – it is wanting to make Jeremy feel _good_. He’s never seen himself as capable of being selfless (really, that’s the difference between the Ravens and the Trojans and how the latter is a _team_ and the first isn’t – _selflessness_ ) but now, with Jeremy—he wants to be.

Or rather, simultaneously be selfless and selfish. He wants to make Jeremy feel good but he also just _wants_ Jeremy, full stop.

And _wanting_ something _gentle_? That’s scary, and foreign, and not in Jean Moreau’s DNA. So he wants to hurt himself, again. He wants to slice up his inner arms and have that pain remind him of his true nature – unlovable and unloving, made to be on the field, a finely tuned weapon, made to _kill_ ; and made to be _killed_. There’s no room for softness in a hollow body that only knows violence.

All of this is so, so foreign and he doesn’t know what to do.

He’s tried to shut down and push Jeremy away – push them _all_ away – but he won’t let him. He’s there, rock solid; gentle, and kind, and patient. Another thing Jean has never known of – what is _patience_? A foreign concept, much like love. Everything about Jeremy Knox is a foreign concept: joy, positivity, kindness. Everything about Jeremy Knox _screams_ danger, screams _run_.

Evil is kind, kind is evil, and Jean Moreau needs to turn around and _run_. He wanted to escape the Ravens so bad but he never ran because in the end, that was all he knew. That was what he was made for. He was meant to be on that field and after that, on the bathroom patching himself up. He was meant to bleed. He wanted to run because it hurt – now he wants to run because it doesn’t.

Now he _needs_ to run because it doesn’t.

But he can hurt himself, too. The Moriyamas don’t have copyright on pain; they’re not the only ones that can make a kid bleed.

He realises then, Jeremy wouldn’t want him to bleed. Jeremy would accept him bleeding; it’d be all acceptance and endless kindness and no pushing him away, but he wouldn’t _want_ him like that. He wouldn’t want him to hurt himself. Not because there’s anything special about Jean, but because Jeremy is Jeremy and he loves people too much to like seeing them in pain.

And this is when it gets _really_ scary – it’s been scary all this time, but now it’s getting wilder: Jean wants to make Jeremy proud, wants to—fuck, he’s never going to hurt himself again because he knows Jeremy wouldn’t want him to. That word is— _hell_. Being with the Ravens might’ve been one kind of hell because it hurt, and it was bloody, and it was brutal, all violence and anger, but this—feeling for someone, this way? That’s _hell_.

It’s terrifying and it’s all-consuming and Jean doesn’t know what to _do_. Being with the Ravens might’ve hurt but, by God, this could end up hurting so, so much more. Putting himself in another person’s hand this way—being _vulnerable_ like this—he was raised to eliminate all weaknesses and now he’s developing some. Love is a _weakness_. Being vulnerable and open like that is a _weakness_ , which is why Jean needs to _run._ But he doesn’t want to. He wants to stay and he wants to be with the Trojans, he wants to be part of the _team_ , and he wants to be with Jeremy, and make Jeremy feel _good_.

He realises, this is really all Jeremy’s goddamn _fault_. Three months ago, he would’ve run. Three months ago, he would never have let this happen, never have let anyone get under his skin like this. The therapist would say this is good, of course; that he’s coping, that this is _progress_.

He doesn’t know if this is progress or what it is; he knows he’s falling too fast and that he’s going to drown.

Jean Moreau wasn’t made for gentle hands and he has never actually craved them either – the knowledge that he was made for the field was enough to keep his head bowed, to keep him from feeling some foolish kind of hope that someone could love him some day. That some day he could deserve to be loved.

Now, he isn’t just craving gentle hands – he’s craving _being_ gentle hands. He still wants Jeremy to throw him to the dogs, and isn’t that love, really? Letting someone do with you what they want, letting them throw you to the dogs if that’s what they please to. Love is trusting they won’t do it – Jean knows Jeremy wouldn’t do it, but he _wants_ him to. He wants him to fuck with him, because that’s what he knows and that’s what he deserves. But he also wants him to treat him so _soft_. He wants this to be so different, he wants this to _be_.

There was sex in the nest – fucking, all brutal. It was a physical thing, a way of letting out adrenaline, aggressions. It was rough, and fast, and dirty.

Jean wants Jeremy differently. He wants to fuck him well enough but he doesn’t want it to be like _that_ – it is all such a paradox, all so contradictory, and he’s so confused and terrified. He wants Jeremy to destroy him, tear him to shreds. He wants Jeremy to help him not fall to pieces, help him _heal_. He wants Jeremy in a primal, hungry way. He wants to read fucking poetry or whatever for him till he falls asleep.

Maybe he should talk with Jeremy, let it be up to him. The only conclusion Jean can draw from all this _mess_ is that whatever Jeremy wants would be fine with him. Jeremy wants this to be a thing, too? Terrifying, but Jean would—Jean _wants_ that so bad. Jeremy wants to kill him? Jean would sharpen the knives for him.

Nothing makes sense, but maybe it isn’t supposed to. Maybe nothing is supposed to make sense; maybe that’s what _love_ is. He doesn’t even know if this is that – but he could want it to be. He thinks, maybe, it even _could_ be. Maybe, someday, Jean Moreau will grow to deserve to be loved.


End file.
